Love Story
by The Lawrence Tree
Summary: Stories can be tilted different directions, like painted vases. Upright, painted colors catch the light. Everything makes a certain kind of sense. Tilt it another way, though, let it catch the light a little differently, and you'll find everything changes. Heroes become villains, magic becomes horror. Love stories become tragedies. Taiorato, Sorato, Taiora. But it's Taito, really.


This is a story about love. This is a love story.

Stories can be tilted different directions, like painted vases. Upright, painted colors catch the light. Everything makes a certain kind of sense. Tilt it another way, though, let it catch the light a little differently, and you'll find everything changes. Heroes become villains, magic becomes horror. Love stories become tragedies.

This story is like that.

* * *

One place to start the story is here:

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Sora. The little girl lived alone with her mother, who was not very nice. Although she tried and tried, the little girl could never tell if her mother even loved her at all.

The girl's mother liked soft, pretty things, even though she herself was hard as flint. She arranged flowers into large elegant sprays and wore long kimonos patterned in pink and green.

The girl was not like her mother. The girl was not like her at all.

What the girl liked was this: soccer. She liked the feel of the ball held firm between her feet. She liked the whoosh of the wind as she flew down the grassy field. She liked the cheers from her teammates each time she scored a goal.

It was because she liked soccer that she met him. The soccer player.

She met him on the first day of soccer club when she was still quite small. She walked to the park alone with her ball tucked under one arm. When she arrived she saw the other kids clustered together on the grassy field, kicking a ball between them. They were mostly boys but there were girls too. They were laughing and joking and having fun. But they stopped when she drew near.

She hesitated. She knew she was different from other kids. Other kids had mothers who fussed over them, doted on them. She wondered if these kids could already tell that there was something wrong with her.

"Are you here for the soccer club?" said one of the kids. When she nodded, the kid's face lurched into a sneer. "Ugh. Another _girl_. Seriously?"

The little girl felt tears rising up as most of the boys in the group laughed. The sound of their laughter was not very nice. The other girls in the group looked around at the not-nice laughing faces for a moment. Then the girls joined in too. Those other girls laughed longer and harder and meaner than any of the boys did. They pointed their fingers at her as they laughed, just to make it clear that they knew it was only her that was somehow different from the rest.

The little girl felt those tears well up higher in her eyes. She turned to go.

"Hey, wait!" said a voice. She felt a hand on her arm. She turned. It was the soccer player. _Her_ soccer player. The one she would fall in love with.

This was the first time she ever saw him, and what she saw was this: a boy her age with a cheerful face. He had kind eyes and tanned skin. He had a smile like the sun.

He nodded at the ball under her arm. "Wanna play?"

She choked back her tears and nodded. She put the ball on the ground. The soccer player smiled his sunshine smile and squared his feet. Then they were off, whooshing down the field, passing that ball back and forth between firm feet, making the others turn to look as they scored one goal together. Then another, then another.

He saved her that day. It would not be the last time he saved her. One day, far off in the future, she would repay the debt. But she didn't know that then.

The soccer player was her first real friend. She would have loved him for that alone. When he asked if she wanted to go to summer camp with him, there was no way she was going to say no.

* * *

Here is another place to start the story:

Once upon a time, it began to snow at summer camp. Then, out of nowhere, a girl and a soccer player and five other children were swallowed up by a whole other world.

In fairy tales, there are monsters and castles and witches and strange creatures that metamorphose from one type of thing into another thing entirely. This world had all of those things. It had ghosts and vampires and ogres and wizards, too. It had villains galore, misshapen shapes lurching out of the dark and devious malefactors plotting endlessly against them.

There were seven of them, and later there were eight. Each of them had to find out for themselves what it meant to be a hero.

If she hadn't loved the soccer player already she would have learned to love him in this world. He was so brave, so strong, so steadfast and loyal and true. He was so _good._ He was a fairy tale hero come to life.

She learned to love the others one by one. There was the computer nerd, whose quick thinking and quicker typing saved them all more times than any of them could count. There was the girl in the pink hat, who whined and complained about everything but who was as heroic as anyone when things got right down to the wire. There was the worrywart, older and wiser than the rest, who had to put aside his worries in order to take up his metaphorical sword. There was the little brother and the little sister, the hope and the light, standing so much shorter than the rest but still burning so very, very bright.

And then there was the musician. He was the unlikeliest hero of them all, cool and aloof, with bluer than blue eyes like ice chips always narrowed down to a dark, steely glare. He was far away and untouchable and cold cold cold, like a full moon hanging oh-so-distant in a wintry night sky. She wasn't sure she liked him at first. None of them were.

He didn't seem to like them much either, apart from the little brother of course. He liked the soccer player least of all. From the beginning the soccer player and the musician were always arguing, always picking fights and throwing punches. Neither of them looked much like heroes with the story tilted like that.

At first the girl stepped in and stopped their fights because she loved the soccer player and wanted to save him, just the way he'd saved her that first day on the grassy field. The musician wasn't very nice, and she knew what it was to always be around people who weren't very nice to you.

Soon, though, she began to see that the musician was more like her than not. He so clearly loved the little brother, after all. And, late at night, when the wistful sounds of his lonely harmonica drifted lazily on the air near their camp, she could tell there was more to his story. Something lay somewhere under all that ice and frost, a different kind of story just waiting to be told.

He was different from the other kids, just like she was. She wondered if he, too, had a mother who was hard as flint, a mother who maybe didn't even love him at all. She wondered if he was mean because mean was all he'd ever known. After that she did her best to break up the fights for his sake, too, not just the soccer player's.

If the musician was an icy moon, for him to become a hero in the story meant that all that ice had to thaw. Heroes can't fight monsters while frozen in ice. They need to be able to _move_.

And that's what happened. The musician thawed little by little, and as he did the rest of them bore witness. He was an unlikely hero, but aren't those the best kind? We root for those heroes even more - it's their very unlikeliness that charms us.

Looking back, though, she can't be sure what came first. Was it the musician thawing, or was it the soccer player and the musician becoming friends? Probably it happened all together. That part of the story tilted during a moment she wasn't there to see.

She grew to love the musician, too, in the end. She didn't love him as much as she loved the soccer player until the day he saved her from the dark. The dark was the metaphorical kind, the kind that swallows you up and eats you alive and takes away every last good thing in you that separates heroes from villains. That kind of darkness is in all of us. That darkness is the forge that makes the villain.

She isn't sure she would have made it out without him. She could so easily have crossed over to the other side.

That was a moment where the story might have tilted, too, if it hadn't been for the musician. That was a debt she would never be able to entirely repay, although for years she would try.

In the end all the heroes were heroes and all the villains were vanquished. The story was through. The eight children returned to their own world.

Who gets to say when the story is over? The war was won, the tale was told, and still the eight of them went on.

They were in a different kind of story now, the kind with classrooms and school uniforms and textbooks instead of wicked witches and fairy godmothers and princess gowns. But maybe all stories have witches in them. Maybe you just need to know where to look.

* * *

Here is another place to begin a story: once upon a time there was a girl who loved two boys, and she put too much heed in stories that told her she would have to choose between them. It didn't help that the girl in the pink hat knew all the same stories. She kept reminding the girl over and over how fairy tales were supposed to end.

The girl loved both of the boys more than she loved anyone else, even though the boys couldn't have been more different. One was the soccer player with the smile like the sun. The other was the musician with eyes faraway as the moon.

She didn't want to choose.

She picked one, anyway.

This is a Christmas story. Why are so many of the stories we tell set at Christmastime? Perhaps when the days are short and the nights are cold, we need stories in the exact same way we need fires to warm us.

The girl thought and thought, and then she picked the musician. The soccer player had saved her first, but the musician had saved her from herself. She hoped that meant he could see her better. She couldn't know that, from this vantage point in the story, none of them could see. Not really. Not _yet_.

It was Christmas Eve. The day was cold. When she brought her love to the musician, wrapped up in a shiny box and tied with a bow almost like any other gift, the soccer player happened to see her waiting outside. Her heart was heavy as she told the soccer player why she was there. She knew she wasn't imagining the disappointment in his eyes.

Many years in the future she will still be turning the vase of this moment over and over again in her mind. What would have happened if she had made a different choice? How would the story have gone if she had chosen _not_ to choose?

The musician accepted the gift. The soccer player walked away alone.

How long is ever after? How many characters have to find happiness for the ending to count? In stories we pretend that endings are eternal. The reality is that nothing lasts that long.

It felt like an ending. At first. The girl and the musician went on dates. They held hands. They kissed. The soccer player - of course, for he had been a hero before any of them, and would stay a hero until the very end - swallowed his pride and stayed best friends with them both. Everything was good. Everything was as it should be. At least for a while.

The happy ending began to slip away from her so slowly that, looking back, she could never quite pin down the exact moment it had started to slip. Sometimes, when she looked deep into the musician's eyes, she saw for just a moment that the ice was still back there. She thought he had melted long ago in that far-off world. But ice that thick doesn't thaw all at once. A little lingers. Sometimes the core of ice at the very center never really thaws at all.

When high school ended the girl and the musician moved in together. She held him in her arms at night and hoped that she would be the one to thaw the remaining ice at last. She tried and tried, but no matter how warm the words and affections she offered, nothing she did could melt that icy core.

Then one day without warning the soccer player stopped talking to them both. The girl and the musician were both devastated. When sunshine withdraws, it leaves only dark night and storm clouds in its wake. Without sunshine the _happily ever after_ couldn't possibly be true.

The girl and the musician both wanted the soccer player _back_.

But that's a different story.

Later, when the musician broke up with her, she wasn't exactly surprised. There had been enough clues left along the line for her to guess this was the ending that was coming. It was the same story as before but with a different ending, this one not so happy this time.

Don't forget, though, that endings aren't eternal. Nothing lasts that long.

* * *

Sometimes stories happen to other people. Sometimes you're not even on the outside looking in.

There are parts of this story that the girl missed. We all miss the stories that don't happen to us. Billions of stories happen every day, each a vase that can be turned and tilted and shifted in the light. We can't tell them all. We can only decide how to tell the ones that belong to us.

* * *

Here is another place to begin a story. This story is a sequel. Or maybe it's yet another ending. Who's to say? Anyway, here it is: the eight children grew up, but one day that other world swallowed them all up again.

That other world got in the habit of doing just that, every few years or so. It was a hungry world. That was probably due to the monsters. What was a fairy-tale monster, after all, but an insatiable hunger given flesh? The eight of them were used to being swallowed up by then. They steeled themselves for the fight. They would claw their way out and back home, just like they always did.

Something went horribly wrong this time.

There are certain things that aren't supposed to happen in stories. The bad guy isn't supposed to get the girl. The villain shouldn't win the day. The hero should always learn to save _himself_ , first.

The soccer player with the sunshine smile can't get killed by the monster.

The monster towered above them. The soccer player lay splayed out on the ground. The children - only seven of them, now - watched in horror a short distance away.

Maybe he wasn't really dead. He almost never was.

But this time he really, _really_ looked it.

"His neck," said the little brother. He was not so little anymore. Even so, he had been all of their hope for so long. But now his voice was dull and gray. "Look at his neck. It's all - other side to."

The sunshine boy had been the first one to save her. The girl wanted to return the favor this time. She began to pull away from the group, to run heedlessly to his side. She wasn't sure what she could do, but she would find a way to do _something_. She would yell and scream and shake her fist at the sky. She would find a way to get the story to shift.

She began moving too late. The musician beat her to it. The other children watched as he ran to the soccer player's side. Kneeling down, he cradled the soccer player in his arms.

It was then that the ice in his eyes melted at long last. It came out all at once, great globs of tears that fell - _plop plop plop -_ onto the soccer player's still form.

"Taichi, Taichi," he said, his voice a low murmur. "Taichi, no. You can't leave now. Not _now_. Taichi, please - _I love you_."

Looking at them lying there on the ground, her musician and her broken sunshine boy, the girl realized something.

This was a love story, all right.

It was just that the story wasn't about her.

Maybe it never had been.

The vase of the story was turning and shifting and changing on her all over again. She had thought it a love story. She had thought herself a fairy-tale princess, the soccer player and the musician both her fairy-tale princes. Her saviors.

She was wrong.

But then, even if it wasn't her story, weren't they both still hers to love? If they didn't love her back, or at least not in the fairy-tale way, did that mean that her love didn't get to count?

Perhaps all the questions swirling in her mind came down to this: does it matter if you aren't the hero of the story? Shouldn't you still figure out if there's anything you can do?

The girl who loved everyone thought about all of this. Above her head the crest of love came alight. The girl's crest radiated a faint red light. The light grew. It grew and grew and grew. It gleamed, it glared, it glittered. Slowly it washed in great waves over them. First it washed over the girl, standing where she was and loving everyone just as fully as she always had. Then over the other five children, stock-still and in shock. Then over the soccer player and the musician, the one still unconscious and the other still lost and foundering without him.

Lastly that wave of light crashed over the great towering monster that loomed above them all.

When the light finally dissipated the monster was gone. The girl who loved everyone looked back to the boys she loved best.

Somehow the soccer player's neck didn't look so broken any more. Somehow he was pushing himself up on his elbows.

The soccer player looked at the musician. The musician looked at the soccer player.

No one was looking at the girl.

The sunshine soccer player and the moonlight musician smiled and smiled at each other. They kept smiling and smiling as their mouths closed in for a kiss. The kiss was one of those kisses that was a fairy-tale ending all in itself. It was the kind of kiss that was a promise, a confession, a revelation, an eternity all rolled into one. All the time they never stopped smiling.

Watching them, the girl couldn't help but smile, too.

Once upon a time, they had saved her, both of them in different ways. Today was the day she had saved them back. For today, anyway, _she_ was the hero.

Maybe it _was_ her love story, after all.

~fin~

* * *

Author's note: This can be read as a stand-alone, or it can be read as a companion piece/prequel/sequel to Little White Misunderstandings (id: 3269317). As a standalone, the last scene can be read as a commentary on Tri. As a companion piece, I know it's totally different in tone, style, etc, but the last scene happens immediately after Ch. 19 of Little White Misunderstandings.

 **Inspired by this post by the amazing author Maggie Stiefvater** (apologies for url weirdness but ffn is weird): maggiestiefvater dot com/blog/this-is-going-to-be-about-heroes/

Read her post. You won't be sorry. Then read All the Crooked Saints. Then read everything else she's ever written. You won't be sorry.

 _Really_ what this fic is: a 3400-word distillation of everything I love about Digimon and my OTP, as seen through a Stiefvater-esque lens. A fan letter of sorts. But I guess a fan letter is just another kind of love story. :P

TK's dialogue is directly taken from a line in Susan Glaspell's short story _A Jury of Her Peers._


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